Open Spreadsheets
Open Spreadsheets = co-editable spreadsheets for the sharing of data
Context
From Sam Rose at http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/?p=238
"Co-creating public or community data, and making that data open and shareable and re-useable adds a new dimension to knowledge commons.
The EditGrid developers weblog envisions co-editable web-based spreadsheets as a platform of “data democracy"
"In Wikipedia, users join the rest of the world to tie pieces together into a full picture. But there are many types of data which is are “wikipediable", from comparing mobile phones to real-time tracking of where avian flu-infected birds are found dead. Wiki data adds a quantitative dimension to wiki, which is an otherwise largely qualitative sphere of human collaboration."
For instance, communities can keep track of, and collaboratively create data bases on all sorts of data about their community, from environmental quality, to crime statistics, to termite or carpenter ant infestations per-household. This can allow people to collectively make facts about their communities transparent. It can also help them predict future trends together based on statistics.
Nicholas Negroponte once said: “In a digital age, data about money is worth more than money."
The democratization of the tools needed to collaboratively collect and analyze data lower the barrier of entry for people to utilize and share data.
Catalog of Open Spreadsheet Projects
Please note: not all of these web based spreadsheet projects are actual Open Source software per se. However, all of these spreadsheet programs allow people to share data in an open way. So, although the software is not necessarily "open source", the data content of the spreadsheets can potentially be "open" and free to reuse or share, if the creators of the data release it that way.
More Information
Delicious tags: http://del.icio.us/srose/wikidata and http://del.icio.us/srose/opendata